Do you remember studying learning strategies? And what about multiple intelligences? Well, I remember learning that we should always be aware of our students´ strategies and techniques, and that teaching strategies is an essential part of education. However, it was difficult for me at that time to imagine how to realize which strategy each student preferred or which techniques they use at the moment of studying.
I´ve been having a private student for almost two years now and I´ve noticed that she uses too many “self-made” techniques. To mention but a few examples, she uses two or three colours in each exercise she completes. She´s told me that by using colours she can recall the words or examples easier than if she didn´t. As she´s for sure visual, when I explain her something, from the meaning of a word to a grammar point, I use colour pens or drawings for her to pay more attention and to help in her storage process. I´ve also noticed that she changes the letter type from one word to the other one. For instance, she writes “a” in a word and, the next time she writes that letter she writes “A”. She´s told me that if she doesn´t do so she cannot concentrate properly on what she does.
Despite these strategies may seem an advantage for her both at the moments of studying and or storing information, I´ve told her that she should try to attach to a specific typology to make her writing tidier. I´ve also realized that she wastes too much time when using her techniques. In fact, her teacher at the institute has told her that she should use the same colour all along exercises and tests. While even for the teacher it may be easier to resort to the same techniques students use if they want the latter to pay more attention, many questions cross my mind. How should we combine all students´ strategies? Should we let students use their own learning strategies and study techniques? Or should we tell them to use those techniques only at home, to practice and to study? Should we be more concerned about the syllabus than about the way our students find it easier to learn? Surely it must be highly difficult to strike a balance between strategies and complying with the syllabus´ contents. After being with this girl for such a long time I´ve started wondering what I´ll do in the future… I´ll try to teach both strategies and contents but I think striking a balance will be the result of experience. How do you see it?
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
A child´s story
It was 2001 and my teacher of English invited my class to submit short stories about Halloween for a competition that was going to be held here, in Rosario. She told us that members of some editorials (of which I hadn´t got a clue in those days) were going to be the jury who was going to pick the winners.
As I´ve always loved writing stories I decided to participate and that same afternoon I started thinking what I was going to write about. I remember the photo of an old house that I had taken the previous summer, when I went to Santa Fe with my family to visit some acquaintances. In fact, I had taken that picture because I had the feeling that it was going to be useful at some point in my life. And there I was, in my bedroom, looking at the photo. It didn´t take me long to invent the story. I had always read too many books both because I was asked to do so at school and because I really enjoyed reading whatever I came across.
I wrote the story and I submitted it. It was September then but it wasn´t until a month later that the news came: I was awarded the first prize in my category. I cannot tell you how I felt when my teacher phoned me to tell me the good news. Both of us were really thrilled and I was surprised as well. On November, 2nd I came to Rosario with my family to the prize-giving ceremony at Ameghino and I was given the abridged version of “Sense and Sensibility” as gift.
This morning, I reread the story. There were moments in which I blushed and I was open-mouthed at the inaccuracies and there were other moments in which I couldn´t help bursting into laughter. Now that I´ve been at College for almost five years I feel embarrassed at those awful mistakes I made when I wrote that story. At the same time, I still feel some pride at having written that tale. I was only 13 when I wrote it and the most important thing is that, apart from being the winner (something which, to tell you the truth, hadn´t crossed my mind when submitting the short-story), I enjoyed the whole process, from choosing the plot to writing the story.
I´m sure I´ll share this experience with my students in the future because I would really like to help them develop their imagination and to make them learn that there´s no need to be proficient at the language to love writing.
Now, would you like to read my short story? If so, click here. And please, let me apologize for all the mistakes I´ve made! There are some which truly deserve a prize! (Only joking!)
As I´ve always loved writing stories I decided to participate and that same afternoon I started thinking what I was going to write about. I remember the photo of an old house that I had taken the previous summer, when I went to Santa Fe with my family to visit some acquaintances. In fact, I had taken that picture because I had the feeling that it was going to be useful at some point in my life. And there I was, in my bedroom, looking at the photo. It didn´t take me long to invent the story. I had always read too many books both because I was asked to do so at school and because I really enjoyed reading whatever I came across.
I wrote the story and I submitted it. It was September then but it wasn´t until a month later that the news came: I was awarded the first prize in my category. I cannot tell you how I felt when my teacher phoned me to tell me the good news. Both of us were really thrilled and I was surprised as well. On November, 2nd I came to Rosario with my family to the prize-giving ceremony at Ameghino and I was given the abridged version of “Sense and Sensibility” as gift.
This morning, I reread the story. There were moments in which I blushed and I was open-mouthed at the inaccuracies and there were other moments in which I couldn´t help bursting into laughter. Now that I´ve been at College for almost five years I feel embarrassed at those awful mistakes I made when I wrote that story. At the same time, I still feel some pride at having written that tale. I was only 13 when I wrote it and the most important thing is that, apart from being the winner (something which, to tell you the truth, hadn´t crossed my mind when submitting the short-story), I enjoyed the whole process, from choosing the plot to writing the story.
I´m sure I´ll share this experience with my students in the future because I would really like to help them develop their imagination and to make them learn that there´s no need to be proficient at the language to love writing.
Now, would you like to read my short story? If so, click here. And please, let me apologize for all the mistakes I´ve made! There are some which truly deserve a prize! (Only joking!)
Monday, 26 July 2010
Hallmark - Front of the Class
Two weeks ago I was watching T.V. at home and, although I wasn´t expecting to find anything important or too entertaining, I came across an excellent movie. It´s called “Front of the Class” and it´s the story of a teacher who suffers the “Tourette Syndrome,” which made him make various strange noises. Those noises bothered people around him so much that he even had a detached relationship with his own father, who couldn´t feel anything but shame and embarrassment in front of his son (especially in public).
Despite his uncomfortable noises, this boy wanted to become a teacher in order to be “the teacher he never had” and it seems he´s managed to become such a special teacher. In the film, he´s a second grade teacher who manages to teach in a very didactic and engaging way. He establishes a very close relationship with his students and he teaches them both the contents in the syllabus and many other things useful for the children´s future lives. Together with his students, he goes through both difficult and happy situations.
While I was watching the movie, the way the teacher taught made me remember the almost perfect plans we have had to make for the Workshops. By the end of the movie I discovered it was based on a true story. The real teacher is called Brad Cohen and he´s American. The film shows most of his life and teacher career. This man has become a famous teacher in his country and around the world, since he´s got a foundation to help those children who suffer the same syndrome he has. What´s more, he´s published an autobiography in which he explains how much he´s suffered and how determined he´s been to see his dream of becoming a teacher fulfilled.
I guess you´ll love the film. It´s been broadcasted in Hallmark all this month, but you could rent it at a video club for sure. Just to see some of its scenes, here is a short video:
And in case you want to see Brad Cohen´s website you can click here. If you´re interested in watching the film with your students there´s also a guide available for free.
I hope you enjoy it!
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Peer editing
After many years at College, I´ve undoubtedly learned many things, not only for our future career but also for our future life as well. I believe that one of the most important things is that we have been encouraged to work cooperatively. Although I must have complained a lot about having to meet with my classmates to do research, at the end I´ve always realized that it served a purpose. Each group assignment has made us work together, discuss, take decisions, make concessions and agree on what to do. Once I have had subjects such as Pedagogy, Didactics and the Workshops I´ve fully realized that group work does work, even when forced to work with classmates who aren´t very close to me.
In Language classes we have also worked cooperatively as well. For instance, we have always practiced peer editing. I´ve particularly found such way of working really useful, haven´t you? When writing I sometimes make mistakes that go unnoticed for me but that my classmates usually see when reading my work. Editors raise awareness towards those mistakes and generally give an overall appraisal of the whole work.
When deciding to write about this topic here, I googled “peer editing” so as to gather more information about this issue and I could confirm all I thought about its usefulness. I´ve found that peer editing isn´t only essential for the person who writes but also for those who edit as well. It is a moment in which editors have the opportunity to criticize others´ work, to analyze it, to judge critically what others´ have written. At the same time, editors can learn from the way in which others write: they can learn vocabulary, expressions, organizational patterns and they can become more sensitive to connotation and style.
In our particular case, as future teachers, peer editing helps us to correct others´ writing tasks. We can practice how to correct, how to raise awareness towards mistakes and how to address the person we are correcting. We should be very tactful when correcting, since our intention should be far from hurting our classmates´ feelings. And in a couple of years we should be very careful not to hurt our students´ feelings either! Finally, by editing our classmates we can “play” to be teachers at least for a while and this is more encouraging and challenging if we think we are correcting those who are at our same level or even above us. ¨
Would you like to read something about peer editing? I´ve visited this site and I´ve found it quite interesting. It gives many guide on how to edit. Maybe you can make more contributions!
In Language classes we have also worked cooperatively as well. For instance, we have always practiced peer editing. I´ve particularly found such way of working really useful, haven´t you? When writing I sometimes make mistakes that go unnoticed for me but that my classmates usually see when reading my work. Editors raise awareness towards those mistakes and generally give an overall appraisal of the whole work.
When deciding to write about this topic here, I googled “peer editing” so as to gather more information about this issue and I could confirm all I thought about its usefulness. I´ve found that peer editing isn´t only essential for the person who writes but also for those who edit as well. It is a moment in which editors have the opportunity to criticize others´ work, to analyze it, to judge critically what others´ have written. At the same time, editors can learn from the way in which others write: they can learn vocabulary, expressions, organizational patterns and they can become more sensitive to connotation and style.
In our particular case, as future teachers, peer editing helps us to correct others´ writing tasks. We can practice how to correct, how to raise awareness towards mistakes and how to address the person we are correcting. We should be very tactful when correcting, since our intention should be far from hurting our classmates´ feelings. And in a couple of years we should be very careful not to hurt our students´ feelings either! Finally, by editing our classmates we can “play” to be teachers at least for a while and this is more encouraging and challenging if we think we are correcting those who are at our same level or even above us. ¨
Would you like to read something about peer editing? I´ve visited this site and I´ve found it quite interesting. It gives many guide on how to edit. Maybe you can make more contributions!
Thursday, 1 July 2010
A dazzling performance
Probably many of you won´t find this video appealing at all. I know how fiercely criticized the Church, as well as its members, have always been. However, I am a Catholic and, though I may or may not agree with some principles the ecclesiastic institution still holds, I do believe in both Jesus and The Bible and I try to follow my religion as much as I can. I´m making this clear because it is necessary to know this in order to explain why I´ve decided to publish this video here.
A friend of mine once published it in her facebook and when I saw it I felt really pleased. Seeing all those people gathered together watching such a performance made me have goose pimples. The video shows in a quite clear and didactic way how Jesus has given his life for all of us. We are shown how the girl feels tempted by many vices and how others try to coax her into doing what they want her to do.
The song which accompanies the performance is highly effective since its “ups and down” (I don´t know anything about music) in its tones have been made to match all the different situations which are acted out. The loudest moments in the song are the climactic moments in the show, too. This makes the video even more dramatic and catchy.
Now, let me tell you there´s no need to be a Catholic or to follow any other religion to either watch or like the video. I´m sure we must have felt the need to have someone (and here I´m not restricting “someone” to mean Jesus!) to listen to us, to free us from those things that are worrying us, that are perturbing our minds and that can´t let us feel contented with our life or achievements. In this case, the video shows Jesus helping and freeing the girl. But I guess that the same we see him doing in this video is the same thing any other person (a friend, a relative, etc.) will do for us whenever we get the blues. How do you see it?
A friend of mine once published it in her facebook and when I saw it I felt really pleased. Seeing all those people gathered together watching such a performance made me have goose pimples. The video shows in a quite clear and didactic way how Jesus has given his life for all of us. We are shown how the girl feels tempted by many vices and how others try to coax her into doing what they want her to do.
The song which accompanies the performance is highly effective since its “ups and down” (I don´t know anything about music) in its tones have been made to match all the different situations which are acted out. The loudest moments in the song are the climactic moments in the show, too. This makes the video even more dramatic and catchy.
Now, let me tell you there´s no need to be a Catholic or to follow any other religion to either watch or like the video. I´m sure we must have felt the need to have someone (and here I´m not restricting “someone” to mean Jesus!) to listen to us, to free us from those things that are worrying us, that are perturbing our minds and that can´t let us feel contented with our life or achievements. In this case, the video shows Jesus helping and freeing the girl. But I guess that the same we see him doing in this video is the same thing any other person (a friend, a relative, etc.) will do for us whenever we get the blues. How do you see it?
South Africa: who cares about it?
We all know the World Cup is taking place in South Africa. But what is shown on T.V. about the present of that country? Has discrimination truly disappeared? Are all South Africans free from starvation nowadays? I guess no channel has said anything about all that. At least I haven´t heard anything, have you? Shouldn´t we be more critical and demand all this information from the media? Maybe we are too busy to stop watching a match to think or to talk about this. We talk about the “vuvuzelas” instead.
As a future teacher and as a trainee teacher I cannot understand why schools haven´t taken advantage of this whole month to teach something new and interesting. Why letting the students go back home after each match if each teacher, in each subject, could have taken the opportunity to teach something? Students would be highly motivated to investigate about the African continent and about South Africa. Why can´t the Geography teacher ask about that country´s climate for instance? Or why not asking students to compare the climates of Argentina and Nigeria or Greece, with whom we were opponents? Why can´t the language teacher ask students to write a piece of news about each match or to create a story of what could happen in the opponent´s changing room after losing? Various examples like these ones cross my mind now. It´s not worth mentioning them. What I want to make clear now is that I´m not against enjoying football matches for a month, but surely there are other things happening around the world which are worse than Italy of France being out of the tournament in their third match. And as for schools, authorities should have implemented ways of keeping students engaged to study.
We still have two weeks to entertain ourselves with matches. And teachers and authorities still have two weeks to do something with the World Cup, don´t you think so?
As a future teacher and as a trainee teacher I cannot understand why schools haven´t taken advantage of this whole month to teach something new and interesting. Why letting the students go back home after each match if each teacher, in each subject, could have taken the opportunity to teach something? Students would be highly motivated to investigate about the African continent and about South Africa. Why can´t the Geography teacher ask about that country´s climate for instance? Or why not asking students to compare the climates of Argentina and Nigeria or Greece, with whom we were opponents? Why can´t the language teacher ask students to write a piece of news about each match or to create a story of what could happen in the opponent´s changing room after losing? Various examples like these ones cross my mind now. It´s not worth mentioning them. What I want to make clear now is that I´m not against enjoying football matches for a month, but surely there are other things happening around the world which are worse than Italy of France being out of the tournament in their third match. And as for schools, authorities should have implemented ways of keeping students engaged to study.
We still have two weeks to entertain ourselves with matches. And teachers and authorities still have two weeks to do something with the World Cup, don´t you think so?
Before starting the course of study I didn´t have very clear in my mind the way in which we were going to learn about the Language and how to teach it. In the first Language lesson, our teacher welcomed us to the teacher training and she told us we had just started a "never-ending process". She was quite right! One never finishes learning vocabulary, expressions, structures or whatever forms part of the English language. In fact, in a couple of months I discovered myself reading and learning "scientific" vocabulary when studying Psycholinguistics or Methodology, for instance. And the most amazing thing was that I could understand everything I was reading!Hasn´t it happened to you, girls, that you had never thought you were going to learn some things that you now know almost by heart? What about the vocabulary we "discoverd" in Social Studies, in Language and in the Workshops? Let´s share our experiences!!!
The greatest photo?
When we said we could include pictures in our posts this photo immediately came to mind. It was 2003 and I came across this picture in “VIVA” Magazine. I remember staring at it for at least a minute and then showing it to my mum. It really shocked me. I couldn´t (and I still can´t) believe how someone could take a picture when facing such a harsh reality.
If I come to analyse it, this picture has, at least for me, many points that should be discussed. In the first place, I believe it is the best example of selfishness. It is said that the photographer, after taking the pict, helped the child to get up and that she could go on walking on her own. Why could the camera be more powerful than his feelings? Despite the situation, the man took the photo before helping the girl. Other people would have thrown the camera away instead.
Though, as I´ve just mentioned, it is said that the child didn´t die, I guess that if this were true, someone would have found that girl years after the photo was taken, to show that the photographer wasn´t a heartless person –and to make hoards of dollars out the good news, too. Unfortunately, we cannot even listen to the photographer´s words since he committed suicide a year after taking the picture. If the child didn´t die, then why did he receive so much pressure and why couldn´t he shout to the world that he just took a good picture and then helped the child to survive?
I believe there is something else about this picture that should be said. It won a well-known prize among photographers: the Pullitzer. Does the picture deserve a prize? I don´t know much about taking photographs. I guess that the focus is quite good and that the colours combine perfectly with the situation portrayed, but the image that has been portrayed has been known for centuries now and no one has ever done anything about this. Hunger and poverty are not new to anyone.
The picture won the Pullitzer since it was claimed that it summarized the world´s history (and Africa´s history as well) but if this is so, then it should be worrying rather than amazing.
Maybe we´ll never know the truth about what happened after the photo was taken. I´ve always hoped to know something about the girl in the picture and which her fate has been. Do you know something else? And most importantly, how do you feel when looking at the photo? I hope there won´t ever be more examples like this.
Maybe we´ll never know the truth about what happened after the photo was taken. I´ve always hoped to know something about the girl in the picture and which her fate has been. Do you know something else? And most importantly, how do you feel when looking at the photo? I hope there won´t ever be more examples like this.
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